The Trip From Hell

Where to begin... let's just say our first travel experience was one I hope to NEVER have again. A big group of us, and by a big group I mean pretty much the entire Wells Program went to Rome this weekend. My friends and I took the high speed train there at 9 A.M. on Friday, so we arrived within an hour and a half. I slept the entire train ride and that part seemed to be a success. Once we arrived Jenna and I needed to check into our hotel and meet Alexa and Lauren there. Allie was coming with us to the hotel and then we were going to her friends apartment and going to meet up with some other people. The hotel I booked was a Best Western, so I thought it would be cleaner than a hostel, and that we would not be spending much time there so the location wouldn't matter. That would have been the case had we not been stuck in the first snow since 1985. When Jenna, Allie, and I left the train station we realized we had no idea how to get to the hotel. We asked a few people we thought may be helpful, like a police officer, but no one apparently speaks English in Rome so that was not much help. We finally figured out we had to take a bus and then walk a few minutes. We got on the bus and noticed everyone was scanning their tickets, which we did not have. Thanks for the free bus ride! Allie made an Italian friend on the train and we communicated with her with a mixture of speaking Spanish (which is similar to Italian) and using the translator app on Jenna's phone. This lady was very nice and helped us get off on the right stop. At this point it was raining, and we started walking to try to find help with directions. We stopped in a Hertz car rental because I thought maybe someone there would speak English. Nope, it turns out every person we encountered during the day did not speak any. The ladies at Hertz had us write down our address and they looked it up on a map. One of them proceeded to walk us to our hotel, which was about a 15 minute walk. She was on the top of our good list for the day. Once we arrived at the hotel and got in our room we noticed that the bathroom smelled like a combination of mildew and dead animal. The actual room wasn't bad, but the smell sure was. We dropped off our bags and were headed to the friend's apartment. By this point the snow was coming down hard, with some of the biggest snow flakes I have ever seen. The area Allie's friend lived in is apparently where most of the students live, but it seemed to be in the middle of no where. With the snow, our cab ride took over an hour, and cost us 33 euro. Her friend said there was a great restaurant across the street so we went to go grab lunch there. Turns out it was closed and the only thing open was a cafeteria like place. This reminded me more of a gas station or a soup kitchen than anything else, but it was our only option. Me, Allie, and Jenna all got sandwiches, which they took directly off the display and heated up (gross), and Allie also got soup and caprese which came the same way. After taking a bite of my sandwich I was disgusted and opted for an ice cream bar, chips, a coca cola light, and mentos for my meal. Yes, very nutritious I know. The snow had only gotten worse and it was getting pretty hard to meet up with the rest of our friends. We heard that the Colosseum was closed, and that the city of Rome was pretty much shutting down due to the snow. We decided it would be smart to just head back to our hotel and either wait it out until dinner or try to head back to Florence. This is where the day headed south. None of the taxi numbers were answering so we just started walking to try and find one ourselves. In Europe, you cannot just hail a taxi; you either need to call one or go to a taxi stop. We were trying to wave down every taxi that drove by because we were desperate. We stepped into a real estate office and they tried calling one for us, but the street our hotel was off of was in their words "impossible", because they were icy. We finally saw a cab stop and someone get out so we jumped in and told the driver our address. He said he could not drive there and we said please we need to get back so he drove away. After another hour cab ride the driver stopped and said, "this is as far as I go, you walk from here". We were over 2 miles away and had no idea how to get to the hotel, so basically we were stranded in the middle of Rome and could not find anyone who spoke English to help us. After walking in the freezing snow we finally found a taxi stop, but there were no taxis there. We sat in a cafe across the street and warmed up a little, and then decided to look for a taxi again. At this point my dad told us to just find a hotel nearby and wait it out there, but we were determined to just get back to Florence, because we had had enough of Rome. We spotted a cab pulling into the taxi station so we sprinted across a busy intersection to grab it. I almost got hit by about 7 cars, but it was worth it. Jenna jumped in the cab while it was still moving and we begged him to take us. Luckily, this guy was literally an angel and said no problem he would get us to our hotel. Allie started to have conversations with him via my translator on my phone, and told him we loved him and this was the worst day. He was very nice and even agreed to wait for us outside the hotel while we got our bags and take us to the train station. This ended up being our cheapest cab, even though it took another hour. At the hotel I checked out and told them we were extremely unsatisfied between the stench in our room and the fact that when we called the hotel for help to get back, they told us it was impossible and they could not help us. They still made us pay for one night, but it was worth it just to get the hell out of there. We arrived at the train station with about five minutes to spare before the train left for Florence. Thank the lord for this cab driver, he literally saved our day. We luckily ran into a bunch of other people from our program all trying to get back to Florence too, so we hopped on the train together. This was the longer train back which was supposed to take about 3 hours, but ended up taking almost 5. I slept the majority of the time, and when we got there could not have been happier to be back. It made us all extremely appreciative that we are spending the semester in Florence, and not Rome or any other huge city. We have been taking for granted how close everything is here, and now we know how lucky we are. We got back around midnight so naturally the only place open for food was McDonald's. So to add to my great meals of the day was a cheeseburger and fries. Although we missed out on eating Tony's in Rome, which everyone raves about, we were just so happy to be back in our beds that it was worth it. I am going back to Rome with my parents for a day or two, and I am going to try to make it there again in April when the weather is better, but I was just not having it this weekend. It was actually relaxing to just spend all of Saturday in Florence walking around and hanging at our apartments. I will keep my fingers crossed that this was our one bad travel experience, and the rest will all go over smoothly.